Friday, July 31, 2015

China on taget to have two aircraft carriers, 20-22 AEGIS like destroyers and 6-7 nuclear attack submarines, while United States would have 11 aircraft carriers; 88 AEGIS like destroyers; and 48 nuclear attack submarines.

Prashanth Parameswaran, The Diplomat
30 July 2015

A former admiral does the math – and the results are quite striking.
Much has been written about China’s ongoing efforts to become what President Xi Jinping called a “great maritime power” and how the United States should respond. In light of this, it is useful to think about the future trajectory of the of the increasingly modern and powerful People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), which has been charged with both defending China’s sovereignty in ‘near seas’ (eg. Taiwan) and protecting Chinese interests in the ‘far seas’.
Rear Admiral Michael McDevitt, now a senior fellow at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), has attempted to do exactly that. In a recent paper delivered at a two-day CNA conference on Chinese maritime power, seen by The Diplomat, McDevitt projects what China’s ‘far seas’ navy will look like in 2020 and how it would rank alongside the United States and other players – Britain, France, Japan, India and Russia. Getting a sense of the PLAN’s ‘far seas’ capabilities is important since it tells us the extent to which it might be able to project power further from China’s shores.
McDevitt’s results, though not entirely surprising, are nonetheless quite striking. According to his projections, on paper by 2020 China’s navy will already increasingly look like a smaller version of the U.S. Navy and will be “the second most capable ‘far seas’ navy in the world.” In five years, the PLAN’s capabilities would dwarf most other navies – China would have as many aircraft carriers as Britain and India, more nuclear attack submarines than either Britain or France, and as many AEGIS-like destroyers as all the other non-U.S. navies combined. China would have two aircraft carriers, 20-22 AEGIS like destroyers and 6-7 nuclear attack submarines, while United States would have eleven aircraft carriers; 88 AEGIS like destroyers; and 48 nuclear attack submarines.
While China would still be far behind the U.S. Navy, its growing capabilities could already begin to have significant implications for the United States and other actors in five years, McDevitt argues. He paints a rather grim picture. By 2020, seeing Chinese warships in the far reaches of the Indian Ocean and the Meditteranean would become a much more routine affair, and some U.S. allies and partners may grow increasingly nervous. It would also become more challenging for the U.S. Navy to keep track of far seas deployed PLAN submarines, while U.S. sea control off of the Middle Eastern and East African hot spots can no longer be assumed. Most alarmingly, McDevitt notes that the image of a Chinese ‘global’ navy will attenuate perception of U.S. power.
The key qualifier, of course, is on paper, a point that McDevitt himself clearly acknowledges. Perhaps most obviously, looking purely at quantity hides the significant qualitative differences that exist between U.S. and Chinese equipment. Rising numbers also tell us little about how operationally competent PLAN far seas forces will be. These include lingering questions about the reliability of combat systems, the training of its sailors, and the functionality of the command structure. Furthermore, straight-line projections cannot reflect the domestic constraints China many face in the coming years that could alter the trajectory of its naval development, including an economic slowdown. Asked how China might confront these challenges, McDevitt said he expected the country to “muddle through,” but that China also did not need to “breathe too hard” to come close to the numbers he projected.
Furthermore, in many ways the United States is still well-positioned to counter threats that a more modern, capable PLAN may pose. As McDevitt noted during the conference, submarines, for instance, continue to remain a distinct American asymmetric advantage. Even here, though, he warned that numbers still do count, a point that former Admiral Gary Roughead also emphasized in his keynote address to the conference on Tuesday. “We need as many subs as we need to make sure that the Chinese worry about that a lot,” McDevitt said.

BEIJING – China and Russia will hold joint military drills in the waters and airspace of the Sea of Japan, Beijing said Thursday, the latest defense cooperation between the countries.
The exercises will take place Aug. 20-28 in the Peter the Great Gulf and other areas off the Russian coast, Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun told reporters.
A key purpose of the drills was to "further enhance their capabilities of jointly coping with maritime security threats," Yang said, adding they will include training in air defense, anti-submarine and surface warfare, and landings.
China will send seven naval ships including a destroyer and a frigate, along with fighter jets and other aircraft, Yang said. Russia's contingent will include surface vessels, submarines and fixed wing aircraft, he said, adding that both sides will dispatch ship-borne helicopters and marines.
The drills come as Beijing and Moscow intensify cooperation in military, political and economic spheres.
In May they conducted their first joint naval exercises in European waters in the Black Sea and Mediterranean. It was China's farthest ever naval exercise from its home waters.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin hold frequent summits and their countries, both permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, often take similar stances there on divisive issues such as the conflict in Syria.
The waters of the Peter the Great Gulf, south of Vladivostok, are close to where the borders of Russia, China and North Korea come together.
Beijing and Tokyo are at odds over islands in the East China Sea farther south controlled by Japan but claimed by China, though both sides have made efforts to cool tensions through dialogue, including meetings between Xi and Japanese prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The Japanese government last week claimed that China has put 16 drilling rigs close to its de facto maritime border with Japan, claiming China could exploit undersea reserves over which the two countries are at loggerheads. Yang dismissed Tokyo's claims.
'The purpose of the Japanese accusation against China is to create and play up the China threat theory," he said, adding it provided Japan "an excuse" for new defencse legislation.
Japan's lower house of parliament this month approved controversial laws to allow Japanese troops to fight alongside allies when under attack, which has raised concerns in China that Tokyo will take a more robust military stance.
China is planning a huge military parade in early September to commemorate victory over Japanese forces as well as the broader defeat of the Axis powers in World War II. Russian troops will participate. China's military took part in a march in Moscow in May also marking the end of the conflict.

WASHINGTON – Adm. John Richardson sailed through his Senate confirmation hearing this morning. But two ominous issues breached the surface, hinting at growing conflict between the administration and Hill Republicans over how to handle China.
Richardson, an experienced submariner nominated for Chief of Naval Operations, deftly dodged the difficult questions from Senate Armed Services Committee: Does U.S.-China cooperation on nuclear reactors help their military? Should the U.S. challenge China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea? But as both Beijing and Capitol Hill step up the pressure, he may not be able to dodge for long.
“Admiral, is China an adversary?” Sen. Tom Cotton asked bluntly.
“China is a complex nation,” Richardson replied. “Many of the things they’re doing have an adversarial nature to them,” he said, notably the construction of pseudo-islands in the South China Sea.
So why are we helping them build up their nuclear navy? the senator asked. The Nuclear Question
The U.S. has had a “1-2-3 agreement” on civilian nuclear cooperation with China since the Reagan administration, back when Beijing was a counterbalance to Moscow. That 30-year deal is up for renewal, but Cotton and fellow conservative Mark Rubio are opposing it. The grounds: U.S. civilian reactor technology transferred to China for civilian purposes could end up in military hands. Specifically, Curtiss-Wright AP-1000 pumps – designed to cool Westinghouse nuclear reactors – were transferred to Westinghouse’s Chinese partners, who also just happen to make the pumps for China’s new ballistic nuclear missile submarines (SSBNs). Pumps are one of the noisiest components of a nuclear sub, so better pump technology makes subs harder to find.
“This is very troubling to me,” Cotton said this morning. “I imagine any increase in the capability and lethality of the PLA Navy would also worry you.”
“This is something I obviously watch extremely closely,” said Richardson, a career submariner. The details are highly technical and highly classified, the admiral went on, but the Navy has looked “very closely” at the civil nuclear agreement. He gave it this less than ringing endorsement: “I believe that in the aggregate, we would be better with a renewed successor agreement than without it.”
Cotton pressed him: “Even if you suspected or knew that the PLA Navy was going to divert civilian nuclear technology towards nuclear naval systems?”
“I can say with a fair degree of confidence we are better with this agreement than we are without,” Richardson said.
The admiral’s written answers to the committee’s questions in advance of the hearing go into more detail on the upsides: ” While it is impossible to state that there will be ‘no risk’ [of civilian technology being put to military use], the successor U.S.-China Atomic Energy Act Section 123 Agreement ensures continued U.S. access to China’s civilian nuclear complex, allowing for the development of a culture of best practices on nuclear security and safety, as well as the opportunity to ensure Chinese nonproliferation policies are consistent with international nonproliferation norms.” There’s also the attraction of selling U.S. nuclear reactors to the largest and most energy-hungry country on the planet. The South China Sea
In both this morning’s hearing and in his written testimony, Adm. Richardson made clear that China’s building program in the South China Sea was “destabilizing.” What he didn’t make clear was what the administration plans to do about it – even when the committee pressed him.
In fact, there are rumors of a disagreement between the White House and the military’s Pacific Command on a crucial question: whether to fly or sail within 12 nautical miles of the new Chinese bases. China claims its constructions in the South China Sea are permanent and inhabited islands, which would legally mean they are each surrounded by territorial waters and airspace for 12 miles in every direction. The U.S. considers them to be artificial and temporary structures, which under international law means they have no legal impact on other nations’ rights of passage in the surrounding seas or airspace. The Chinese have made it clear they think that flying or sailing within 12 nautical miles of these structures would be an unmistakable challenge to their claims.
“Sailing inside 12nm is a key component to any freedom of navigation campaign that seeks to reject China’s claims to these man-made islands,” one Senate staffer told me. “Secretary [of Defense Ashton] Carter‘s speech in Singapore was excellent, but now it’s time we back up his strong words with very visible actions.”
“There seems to be a confusion in our policy,” Sen. Dan Sullivan said at the hearing. At the recent Shangri-la conference in Singapore, he said, “Sec. Carter stated we will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows (and that) turning an underwater rock into an airfield simply does not afford the rights of sovereignty or permit restrictions on international air and maritime transit. However, PACOM commander [Harry] Harris just two weeks ago at the Aspen Security Forum stated it is U.S. policy to afford a 12-(mile) limit around all (features) in the South China Sea ... to include islands and formations.”
“It’s absolutely important that the Navy continue to be present in that region,” Richardson said, “(but) we do have to respect the legitimately claimed territorial boundaries.”
“Does that mean respecting that?” Sullivan said, pointing scornfully to a photo of China’s airstrip atop one of the structures known as Fiery Cross Reef.
“I’d have to at look exactly which of those claims are legitimate,” Richardson demurred. “It’s a dynamic situation there. There are competing claims down there ... We need to get down there, understand the truth, and make that very clear.”
“Mr. Chairman,” Sullivan said, turning to Sen. John McCain (himself no fan of Obama’s foreign policy), “I’ll be submitting questions for the record to make sure the policy of the United States is clarified.”
“Good luck,” the irascible chairman growled.

Adm. John Richardson says it could complicate fight against Islamic State.

Valerie Insinna, Defense Daily
30 July 2015

The Obama administration’s nominee for the next Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Adm. John Richardson, said on Thursday that the service’s planned aircraft carrier gap in the Middle East this fall will be a “detriment” to the service’s capability to fight the Islamic State.
Navy officials have said there could be a two-month void between the time the USS Theodore Roosevelt(CVN-71) leaves the Persian Gulf and the arrival of the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) to take its place, Navy Times first reported in June.
"That does concern me,” Richardson told the Senate Armed Services Committee when asked about the carrier gap during his confirmation hearing. “The overriding message that I hope is clear is our firm commitment to naval presence in that region. We've been there for decades."
"The absence of a carrier doesn't really authenticate a commitment,” quipped SASC chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), who pressed him to detail what platforms could replace an aircraft carrier’s capability.
Richardson said that while there was “no question” about the value of a carrier, the military could try to mitigate the gap through other air or strike assets, such as land-based air platforms like those operated by the Air Force.
Still, "without the carrier, there will be a detriment to our capability,” he noted.
The exchange between Richardson and McCain was the only contentious moment during the hearing, which – unlike the confirmation hearings of the prospective top generals for the Army and Marine Corps – focused on acquisition issues.
If confirmed by the Senate, Richardson will lead Navy efforts to build up from a 278-ship Navy to a fleet of 308 vessels – a process that involves procuring Ford-class carriers, Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) and the up-gunned frigate version, more Arleigh-Burke destroyers and Virginia-class attack submarines as well as the design and development of the Ohio-class submarine replacement – all while the budget remains stagnant.
The strategic environment lends itself to an increased appetite for even more vessels beyond the service’s current 308-ship plan, but there simply isn’t enough money to pay for them, Richardson said. "The current plan does allow us to meet our responsibilities in the defense strategic guidance, albeit with some risk."
As CNO, Richardson will also have to grapple with the Navy’s high operational tempo and problems cycling ships through maintenance availabilities – one of the causes of the potential carrier gap in the Persian Gulf. The service currently only has one carrier strike group and one amphibious ready group available to deploy in case of a contingency, even though it has a requirement to have three of each ready to surge, he noted.
"We're on a path to recover so that we've got full readiness in both of those areas by 2020, but that also is contingent on stable and reliable funding,” he said.
During his opening statement, McCain criticized some of the Navy’s ongoing acquisition programs. The service needs to justify the LCS’s transition to a frigate, address its fighter aircraft shortfall and make sure its carrier-based drone is developed to meet the right requirements, he said. He also cited the $2 billion cost growth of the Ford-class aircraft carrier and called for the Navy to study alternative designs.
Richardson agreed that the cost overruns on the Ford-class carriers were unacceptable, and said he looks forward to being “very involved” in the acquisition process.
“Controlling cost and schedule, while delivering capability, really results from adhering to a few fundamental principles. One is clear command and control that is lean and agile. We've got to have the definition of requirements that are informed by available technology and available resources. You've got to have a stable design and a build plan before you get to production, and also you have to have informed and close oversight," he said. "I think that the chief of naval operations is involved in every one of those four steps."
Ranking member Jack Reed (D-R.I) focused his questions on the uber-expensive Ohio-class replacement program, which is estimated to cost $100 billion.
The requirements for the nuclear ballistic missile submarine are “exactly what we need,” said Richardson, who is currently directs the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. He cited the ship’s stealth capabilities and 16 missile tubes as critical elements of the design.
The Navy is slated to wrap up a study this fall that will help formulate the design and build plan for the Ohio replacement, he said.
“You’ve got to have a mature and stable design before you begin production so you’re not dealing and managing costly change orders after you’ve begun production,” he said. “Then I hope to provide a build plan that would allow for stable and predictable funding. That allows us, the Navy, to work very closely with the shipbuilders to provide a production line that results in the lowest cost per unit.”
Although he was asked during the hearing and in written questions prepared in advance, Richardson did not directly address whether he would support congressional efforts to pay for the program through the Sea Based Deterrence Fund, a Defense Department-wide account where the defense secretary could funnel excess funding from any service.
“The creation of this fund I think highlights the existential importance of this program to our nation and also that executing this program will require a combination of both resources and authorities,” he told the Senate panel.

How To Resupply A Nuclear Submarine
Dan Sagalyn and Jamie McIntyre, PBS NewHour, July 30

It was a sunny Friday in June when our three-person PBS NewsHour production crew was tagged to go aboard a nuclear-armed submarine on active patrol in the Pacific Ocean. Things didn’t go exactly as planned.
Jamie McIntyre, our correspondent, had flown 2,500 miles from Washington, D.C., to Honolulu along with me, the series producer.
To videotape this portion of our news report on the Navy’s most deadly ship – an Ohio-class submarine armed with up to 24 Trident D-5 nuclear missiles – we teamed up with an award-winning cameraman, Jay Olivier, who came in from Austin, Texas.
We arrived at Pearl Harbor Naval Base before the sun rose. There at the dock, we filmed men loading the Malama, a 110-foot personnel transfer vessel, with fresh fruits and vegetables, parts and supplies that were going to be delivered to the sub. We would then ride on the Malama to a secret meeting point in the ocean to rendezvous with the warship.
We set sail about an hour later, navigating the open ocean and making a beeline for our meeting point. An hour and a half later, as we eagerly awaited the USS Pennsylvania to emerge from the depths of sea, we finally saw its tall conning tower far off in the distance.
But then the Navy hit a snag that doomed our day on the sub.
Our uniformed public affairs escort told us that due to an operational concern that had arisen – one entirely outside our control – we could not go on board the sub that day. (Because of the highly secretive nature of nuclear-armed submarine operations, we were asked not to reveal any information we learned about why we were not able to board.)
Luckily that turned out to be a hiccup. The Navy gave us a second shot at a rendezvous two days later. Our daylong ride allowed us to shoot up-close video of operations aboard the Pennsylvania, the focus of our story on ballistic-missile submarines which airs Friday.
But our first attempt at boarding the sub on that bright day allowed us to watch a rarely seen resupply of the U.S. warship.
It was a choreography at sea.
First, the submarine cruised toward the transfer ship. Just before reaching the Malama, it slowed while the resupply ship was allowed to approach.
Sailors on the submarine, wearing life jackets and harnesses, emerged from a hatch. Two sailors toward the front and two toward the rear “rolled the cleats,” which meant flipping up horn-shaped devices that are used for securing ropes.
Two sailors on the resupply ship threw ropes up, one for each of the cleats, to tie the ships together.
Then the crew on the resupply ship extended a ramp onto the sub, allowing for a few senior sailors to board the resupply ship.
Next came the transfer of supplies. A crane on the Malama lifted huge nylon bags, each about the size of a Smart car. Two were hoisted at a time onto the crest of the submarine. Two sailors then untied the bags from the crane and dragged them toward the hatch, where sailors took boxes of food and supplies out of the bags and passed them down a line of sailors, one to another, and ultimately into the submarine. We watched as nearly a dozen resupply bags were transferred.
Eventually, the men on the sub disconnected the lines that kept the two ships together.
As the distance between us grew, we saw the last sailors enter the sub through the hatches and the Pennsylvania disappear beneath the waves and into the dark water.
Two days later, we set out on our second rendezvous. This time, we were able to go inside and talk some of the 180 men who sail the world under the sea, accompanied by the most deadly weapons in existence.
This report was produced in partnership with The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
View Clip (RT: 2:06)
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/resupply-navy-nuclear-submarine/

Thursday, July 30, 2015

China uses “applied friction” – calling coral reefs “islands” to claim them, setting up aerial identification zones, building its navy’s blue water capacity – as part of its strategy to get its way in the Asia-Pacific region, the chairman of the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee said Wednesday.
Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said the Chinese use that friction “like a check valve on a pump.”
“We’ve become very adverse to any friction,” even to the point of renaming the “Pivot to the Asia Pacific” the “Rebalancing to the Asia Pacific,” he said.
But the Chinese “overplay their hand sometimes,” which causes its neighbors to look to the United States to resolve disputes and provide security.
Forbes said the Chinese realize that they have a certain amount of time, possibly a decade, to keep accelerating its economy before serious problems arise, and the current American administration appears unwilling to act with the same force it has towards Russia for meddling in Ukraine.
For China, like Russia, bold steps overseas can divert public attention from domestic problems, he said.
Forbes, who also serves as founder and co-chairman of the Congressional China Caucus, said it was important that the Obama administration brought the Asia-Pacific “to center stage.” That renewed attention has helped the United States improve relations with countries in the region beyond its traditional allies.
“What we want is networks,” Forbes said in answer to a question. He cited Japan’s closer working relationship with Australia on security and the Philippines giving the United States access to facilities there.
“It causes the Chinese to think.”
But, more critically, Forbes has long asked for more from the administration to ensure the new focus on the region is strategic in meeting the United States’ desired goals.
“Tell me what the strategy is,” “are we winning or losing,” and “tell me the metrics you are using,” he said he always asks of witnesses in his hearings.
He said those questions are often met with sighs from the witnesses.
“We’ve gone away from strategic thinking,” he said.
Later, in answer to a question, Forbes said, “we need to redefine what winning is.” It is not a zero-sum game, but rather “It’s bolstering everyone up,” including China, and promoting rule of law over force.
Forbes said the top concern in the region is trade. He said the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty will improve trade relations between the United States and Asian countries.
In his 14 years in Congress, he said China’s military reach has dramatically increased.
“We were writing reports [that in] 10 years [the Chinese] are going to build aircraft carriers,” and those findings were met with skepticism. Forbes said the same thing has proven true about China’s capability to build a ballistic missile submarine. Chinese “blue water capacity is increasing qualitatively, and increasing their [submarines’] quietness.”
Forbes also addressed the American shipbuilding industry during his speech, saying that the current sending levels are inadequate for a global navy charged with protecting undersea cables that carry international financial data and ensuring safe cargo transportation.
“We’re trying to get that narrative out, why we need to bump up those bottom lines,” Forbes said of defense spending levels. “That manufacturing capability [of World War II] is not there any more.” The situation is precarious because there are sole-source providers of materials that can be forced out of business by the sharp peaks and valleys of defense budgets.
“I am more optimistic now” about ending sequestration because a growing number of representatives “recognize we let that pendulum go too far” in allowing across-the-board budget cuts. He also cited a “greater deal of cooperation between appropriators and authorizers” in addressing defense needs.
Forbes said that, although he didn’t want to rely on Overseas Contingency Operations funding to support the military’s spending needs in Fiscal Year 2016 – an account that is not subject to spending caps under the Budget Control Act – the spending tactic worked in giving the military what it needs to do its job.
“The question is, I don’t know if [the president] will veto it,” he added.
http://news.usni.org/2015/07/29/forbes-as-china-increases-tensions-u-s-must-ensure-asia-rebalance-has-the-right-goals

The USS Michigan and three others like it can pack more conventional missile firepower than any other submarines — and in about a decade, they’re probably going away.
Guided-missile submarines like Michigan can also stay at sea longer and deploy larger groups of Navy SEALs than the service’s more plentiful fast-attack subs.
For all their advantages, Navy officials acknowledge they are luxury items in a fiscal environment that doesn’t support building replacements.
As the Navy’s submarine fleet shrinks over the next 13 years due to the retirement of its Cold War-era subs, it will look toward less expensive technology to offset the loss of boats like Michigan, service officials told Stars and Stripes.
However, as long as the Navy has its guided missile subs, they are getting plenty of use. USS Michigan had been on deployment for 21 months when it pulled in to Yokosuka Naval Base for a port visit earlier this month.
“My operational commander would like us to be at sea every minute that I can be,” said Capt. Joe Turk, Michigan’s Blue Crew commanding officer. “The only thing that limits sustainability is food.”
Michigan’s separate Blue and Gold crews typically fly from Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, Wash., to Guam every four months or so, where they swap out command of the boat.
Michigan entered service as one of the Navy’s 18 Ohio-class nuclear trident missile submarines, known colloquially as “boomers.”
When the Navy cut the number of nuclear-missile subs to 14, it converted four of them to carry up to 154 Tomahawk missiles.
The four submarines began global deployments during the past decade. In 2011, the USS Florida took part in a guided-missile submarine’s largest-scale conventional combat operation when it fired 90 Tomahawks in the effort to defeat former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces.
When a guided-missile submarine isn’t firing Tomahawks, it functions much more like a smaller fast-attack submarine, though it retains the typically higher-ranking captain and crew structure of a boomer.
Both the guided-missile subs and fast-attacks conduct surveillance, train to fight ships and other subs, and conduct special operations.
Guided-missile subs have multiple lockout chambers to deploy SEALs and their vehicles underwater. They also have an extra 200 feet of length and a little more width than fast-attack subs, meaning special operators have more room to get comfortable, said Capt. Brian Humm, commodore of Submarine Squadron 19.
“[Special operations] is physically intensive — they work hard,” Humm said. “It’d be nice if they had own racks, it’s nice that they have tons of gear to work out with and … larger facilities.”
However, those are amenities that aren’t likely to last into the long term.
The current 30-year Navy shipbuilding plan calls for guided-missile subs to be decommissioned between 2025 and 2027.
By October 2028, the total number of attack and guided-missile subs would drop to 41, down from 57 today, before climbing back to 48 boats in 2036.
As those numbers drop, the Navy will also ask Congress to fund an Ohio-class replacement in order to preserve what the Pentagon considers the most survivable leg of its nuclear deterrent.
It will cost the Navy $96 billion to acquire the 12 ballistic missile submarines slated to replace the 14 Ohio-class subs carrying nuclear payloads., according to a 2015 General Accountability Office estimate.
At that price, no one has pushed hard to build four more as guided-missile subs. Instead, many in the Navy and Congress are backing an addition that would add more armament to the latest class of fast-attack subs.
The Virginia Payload Module would lengthen the mid-section of Virginia-class subs and allow them to carry 76 percent more torpedoes and Tomahawks. The addition would increase cost of the $2.8 billion subs by 13 percent, according to a Congressional Research Service report in June.
That figure doesn’t include the Tomahawks themselves, which cost about $1 million each, depending on what cost factors are included.
For now, multiple sailors aboard USS Michigan said they were happy to serve aboard a boat that combines fast-attack missions with Ohio-class dimensions.
There are a few more systems aboard a guided-missile sub than on a fast-attack version; however, most of what gets learned to earn “dolphins” — the distinctive pin worn by a submarine-qualified sailor — transfers seamlessly to any of the Navy’s boats, said Chief of the Boat Jason Puckett, of Columbus, Ohio.
“The basics of being a submariner are the same, no matter the platform,” Puckett said.

U.S. Navy Returns To Deep Sea Rescue

MC2 Kyle Carlstrom, Jacksonville.com
29 July 2015

Crew members from Undersea Rescue Command (URC) and contractors from Phoenix Holdings International (Phoenix) completed an operational readiness evaluation (ORE) July 19, re-certifying the Navy’s deep sea submarine rescue capability.
The submarine rescue system had undergone an extensive refurbishment period.
The ORE, a component of crew certification, was the final step in a multistage process that enabled the URC-Phoenix team to become rescue-ready for worldwide submarine rescue.
“This was a tremendous effort by our rescue team, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and Commander, Submarine Force U.S. Pacific Fleet (COMSUBPAC) in restoring this unique capability,” said Capt. Gene Doyle, commander, Submarine Squadron 11 (CSS 11), who is responsible for administrative and operational oversight of URC. “Whether it’s a U.S. submarine, or a partner nation submarine, URC is ready to respond if called upon.”
Dedicated and professional submariners combined with robust and redundant submarine systems ensure that submarines are inherently safe. In addition, the Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System (SRDRS), operated by URC-Phoenix, provides a last line of defense for the rescue of a submarine crew.
The Pressurized Rescue Module (PRM-1) Falcon, which is the submarine rescue vehicle component of the SRDRS, is capable of diving to depths up to 2,000 feet and mating with a disabled submarine trapped on the sea floor. The SRDRS is capable of being flown anywhere in the world to rescue either U.S. or partner nation submariners in distress.
The initial effort of the overall re-certification process was the restoration of PRM.
Key milestones during sea trials included three deep dives, the first of which was an unmanned 2,000-foot dive to verify hull and component integrity at the crushing depth of 61 atmospheres absolute, which is more than 900 pounds per square inch.
The third and final sea trials dive was a manned 2,000-foot dive in the PRM to a training fixture called “Deep Seat” to verify full system operational capability in the harshest conditions expected in a submarine rescue.
The final phase was the ORE, which was a scenario-based event that took the entire URC-Phoenix team through a rigorous simulated submarine rescue using SRDRS aboard HOS Dominator off the coast of Santa Catalina Island in Southern California.
The crew had to execute SRDRS evolutions and PRM dives, including drill anomalies, under timed constraints to conduct a simulated submarine rescue. In addition, PRM open-hatch operations were conducted at depth along with treatment of simulated medical conditions expected from those rescued.
“Re-certifying the Falcon put us right back into the deep sea rescue world,” said Kimsey, “Not only can we supply a deep sea rescue response for our submarines, but for anyone else in the world. We’re already looking to future engagements and exercises in 2016.”

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus promised to unveil a new “roadmap” this fall for how the military will acquire and employ electric lasers, microwave and other directed energy weapons.
Touting the recent deployment of a laser weapon aboard a ship at sea and successful tests of an electromagnetic railgun, Mabus said the Navy is poised to “support rapid and efficient acquisition of directed energy weapons.”
That was welcome news to the standing-room-only crowd that filled a huge ballroom in Tysons Corner, Virginia, to hear Mabus and other officials talk about the future of a technology that the military has toyed with for decades and has perennially been “on the cusp” of a major breakthrough.
Champions of directed energy weapons have been galvanized by a string of technical successes in recent years, but recognize they suffer from a credibility deficit. The Navy will keep pushing to get programs funded and to turn lab projects into military-useful systems, Mabus said at the July 28 “Directed Energy Summit” organized by the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
In order to graduate from science experiments to Pentagon “programs of record,” directed energy weapons will need military sponsors and greater support from Congress, Mabus said. Electric lasers and high power microwaves eventually will be used to defend ships, aircraft and ground vehicles from enemy aircraft and missiles, he said. Most significantly, these weapons could be bought at a fraction of the cost of conventional missiles and artillery rounds. An electromagnetic railgun, for instance, costs $25,000 and a laser shot consumes less than a dollar worth of fuel. By comparison, satellite and laser guided missiles cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Mabus said he is confident the military can produce a lethal 150 kilowatt laser and test it by 2018. That is a tall order as the laser weapon the Navy deployed in 2014 is a 30 kilowatt system.
While laser technology has advanced at a rapid pace, the military will continue to have difficulties packaging the electronics and installing them safely in military vehicles. The limitations of size, weight, power and cooling will be real impediments for years to come, experts said.
There are also considerable political obstacles that could keep laser weapons from transitioning from prototypes to weapons of war.
Support on Capitol Hill is “mixed,” said Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., who is co-chair of the Directed Energy Caucus, a group of lawmakers that is seeking to increase awareness and support for the technology.
“It’s not the easiest thing in the world to explain what the systems are and how they create effects,” said Langevin. Most members and staffs are not ready to embrace this and are not yet sold on the benefits. “It takes time and effort to wrap their heads around the basics of the technology, let alone what the capabilities would mean for future war fighting,” he said. “That’s before you factor in the decades of directed energy being oversold and under-realized ... That’s our biggest enemy.”
Many policy makers like Langevin were once inspired by Ronald Reagan’s 1983 “Star Wars” speech when he laid out a plan to deploy lasers in space to defeat Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. Directed energy weapons had enormous promise that has yet to be fulfilled, he said. “Many people were discouraged because billions were spent and we never realized that vision.”
Today, “we’re further along. Technology is showing maturity,” he said. One day, “the capabilities will speak for themselves.” Langevin encouraged contractors to invest in directed energy research, but understands why some may be losing patience. “There has to be a programmatic light at the end of the tunnel.”
The other co-chair of the Directed Energy Caucus is Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo. He lamented that the Pentagon has spent $6 billion on these technologies and has “too little to show for it.”
The good news, he said, is that “We are at an exciting transition point. We have to push harder to get these technologies past the tipping point.” The hundreds of contractors and military officials at the conference were a friendly audience that did not need convincing, but the Pentagon has to do better at persuading skeptics to fund directed energy programs during these times of tightening military budgets.
The potential cost savings of using lasers instead of kinetic weapons could be a powerful selling point, said Lamborn. “Congress pays a lot of attention to anything that saves money.” If the military can produce a beam of directed energy of sufficient intensity to destroy or degrade a missile or shell for 50 cents worth of fuel, that could help drum up support. Naysayers in Congress are not against directed energy per se, he said. “Some members don’t see it as priority.”
Maj. Gen Tom Masiello, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, suggested that past efforts in directed energy systems failed because they were not “operationally relevant.” A chemical laser that the Air Force built in the 1990s to shoot down ballistic missiles is a case in point. Now the military is worried about defending aircraft from small drone attacks and cruise missiles, which could bolster the case to deploy electric lasers aboard fighters and cargo airplanes. AFRL is integrating a solid-state laser into a pod to be fitted in a fighter-size aircraft. The challenges are significant, however, he noted. “The technology has to be operationally relevant, it has to be affordable, there are a lot of policy issues ... We understand the effectiveness of kinetic weapons. We need analytical tools for directed energy.”
Maj. Gen. J.D. Harris Jr., vice commander of Air Force Air Combat Command, said C-130 gunships will be used as flying test platforms for laser guns. “Once we get the size weight and power they could be used for nonlethal and lethal force.”
The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer has been involved with directed energy weapons for nearly 40 years. Since the 1970s, he has heard about the “great promise of instantaneous kill and an unlimited magazine," said Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. The reality is that “there’s no magic that will allow us to go faster."
The Pentagon spends about $300 million a year on directed energy technology, said Kendall. “I can’t promise the budget is going to get bigger. But I don’t think it’s going to get smaller.” Key experiments scheduled for the next several years will be decisive, he said. “That’s about the right pace.”
Many policy issues haven't been hashed out yet, he added. “We have a series of demonstrations that will culminate in the next five to six years that will position us to move toward operational weapons,” he said. “We made a lot progress. But we’re not there yet.”
Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, recalled a conversation he had more than four decades ago with James Schlesinger, secretary of defense during the Nixon and Ford administrations, about directed energy weapons. The secretary called them “interesting toys,” Krepinevich said. The question is whether one day they will break into the mainstream, he asked. “Submarines and torpedoes were once interesting toys until they became deadly weapons during World War I.” The packed ballroom at the directed energy summit, he noted, is one sign that “people believe the time has come.”

UUVs, Fire Scouts and buoys and why the Navy needs lots of them.

Jan Musil, Center for International Maritime Security
29 July 2015

This article, the second of the series, lays out a suggested doctrine of use for the UUVs and Fire Scouts that have already been developed. It is an incremental strategy, primarily calling for using what the Navy already has in hand, adding use of buoys in quantity combined with appropriate doctrinal changes and vigorously applying the result to the ASW mission.
In getting this program underway the U.S. Navy can utilize existing sensors, whether for prosecuting ASW, developing sonar projections of the water below, including occasional deep diving missions and whatever else we find a need for the UUV to do. In practice though, generating useful results is far easier to accomplish if the UUV is routinely, though not exclusively, used with a tether so the data generated can easily be transmitted back aboard for analysis and use.
Utilizing tethered UUVs with a suite of frequencies to listen and broadcast on opens up some interesting opportunities for the ASW mission. By significantly expanding outward the range of ocean area being searched the U.S. Navy can realistically anticipate creating the possibility of being able to establish a rough range number to a detected target. Spread the sonar emitters out far enough and the use of parallax kicks in and if there is just a little difference in vector to the target from two widely separated hunters they now have a working range number. This range estimate will almost certainly be nothing close to accurate enough to fire on, but it will certainly indicate a distinct patch of ocean to direct any orbiting P-8s or other airframes toward. Finding a needle in haystacks is a lot easier if you have a solid clue as to which haystack you should be searching.
Particularly if the Fire Scouts are simultaneously dynamically moving dipping sonar equipped buoys around the ocean in conjunction with the UUV equipped buoys. For discussion purposes let’s say a Fire Scout starts its day by moving one UUV equipped and four dipping sonar equipped buoys, all transmitting locally to an ISR drone or ScanEagle just overhead, in relays, across the ocean. As the hours pass an enormous amount of ocean can be searched, further and further out from the task force, yet the buoys will be able to keep up with the task force as it travels, even in dash mode. With only one buoy in the air at a time, each one only being moved hundreds or a few thousands of yards at a time, there will be a constant stream of much better data generated for the ASW team than the existing use of sonobuoys can provide. And the deployed equipment will be able to reliably function on station for many more hours than a manned helicopter team can provide.
Perhaps not at a 24/7 rate nor for days and days on end, but a task force with 15 Fire Scouts and 60 buoys
deployed, potentially separated by many miles, has added multiple alternatives to the ASW teams quiver.
It is suggested above that 15 Fire Scouts dynamically rotate 60 UUV or dipping sonar equipped buoys across the ocean. 15 and 60 are merely suggestions though. The real point is that to derive the greatest value out of the newly developed UUVs and Fire Scouts the Navy needs to be thinking in terms of a dozen plus helicopters and scores of buoys at a time, regardless of the particular mix of equipment and sensors dangling beneath them. Again, think and operate in quantity.
Buoys
At this point a brief description of the buoy noted above, to be deployed in scores at any given time, is in order. A set of eight hollow, segmented and honey combed for strength where necessary tubes, say one foot in diameter, made of a 21st century version of fiberglass can be configured in a square. Stacking the ends of the tubes on each other log cabin style, but deliberately leaving the space between each pair of tubes empty creates as much buoyancy as possible, but very deliberately reduces freeboard. Whether the resulting buoy is equipped with a dipping sonar or UUV, both the sensors and the equipment needed to operate the tether, reel for the line and so forth is going to get soaked anyway. Simultaneously, we want a minimum of tossing and reeling about in various sea states as the sonar or UUV does its job or as a helicopter drops down to utilize a hook to grab the buoy and gently lift it clear of the water. So if the waves and swell are moving between the pairs of tubes, this will substantially reduce the buoys unavoidable acrobatics in the water, vastly easing the helicopters task in relifting it for redeployment.
So long as the pyramid resting on top of the buoy containing the motor driving the reel and its power source has a double sealed compartment and the necessary electronics, radar lure and antenna are in a triple sealed compartment above it; both routinely riding above the waves, limited freeboard is actually an advantage. At this point all that is needed is to add an appropriately sized circle of steel for the helicopter to snag each time it moves the buoy and we have an extremely practical piece of equipment to deploy, in large numbers and at a rather low price, across the fleet.
In years to come the Navy can incrementally add the ability to transmit and receive on different frequencies to measure the difference in time back to the emitting sensors thereby creating additional ways to monitor the underwater environment, detect targets and potentially be less intrusive when operating amongst our cetacean neighbors. By doing so we can build a much more sophisticated picture of surrounding water conditions as well. Knowledge that good computerized analysis of the data and developing a doctrine of best practice to utilize this knowledge of water conditions will leave the mission commander’s CIC in a position to make much better informed decisions on where to deploy their search assets next.
Sounds great doesn’t it? But as always there is a problem or three lurking about that need to be dealt with. For now we have reached the point where we need to consider the question used as the title for the article. Where is the U.S. Navy going to put them all?
In the next article we examine two new ship classes that can be used by the fleet to go to sea with the various types of drones, UUVs, Fire Scouts and buoys suggested, in quantity, as well as the needed sailors aboard.
Jan Musil is a Vietnam era Navy veteran, disenchanted ex-corporate middle manager and long-time entrepreneur.

HONG KONG/NEW DELHI – In a dock opening onto the Hooghly River near central Kolkata, one of India’s most lethal new weapons is going through a final outfit.
The Kadmatt is a submarine killer, bristling with technology to sniff out and destroy underwater predators. It’s the second of four warships in India’s first dedicated anti-submarine force – a key part of plans to spend at least $61 billion on expanding the navy’s size by about half in 12 years.
The build-up is mostly aimed at deterring China from establishing a foothold in the Indian Ocean. It also serves another goal: Transforming India’s warship-building industry into an exporting force that can supply the region, including U.S. partners in Asia wary of China’s increased assertiveness.
“India’s naval build-up is certainly occurring in the context of India moving towards a greater alignment with U.S. and its allies to balance China,” said David Brewster, a specialist in Indo-Pacific security at the Australian National University in Canberra. “India wants to be able to demonstrate that Beijing’s activities in South Asia do not come without a cost, and Delhi is also able to play in China’s neighborhood.”
China showed its growing naval prowess when it deployed a nuclear-powered submarine to patrol the Indian Ocean for the first time last year, while a diesel-powered one docked twice in Sri Lanka. India says another Chinese submarine docked in May and July in Pakistan, which is reportedly looking to buy eight submarines in what would be China’s biggest arms export deal.
Obama Help
The U.S.’s Seventh Fleet has patrolled Asia’s waters since World War II and is backing India’s naval expansion. On a January visit to New Delhi, President Barack Obama pledged to explore ways of sharing aircraft carrier technology. The two countries also flagged the need to safeguard maritime security in the South China Sea, where neither has territorial claims.
India’s present fleet of 137 ships falls far short of the more than 300 vessels in China, which has Asia’s biggest
navy. China boasts at least 62 submarines, including four capable of firing nuclear ballistic missiles, according to the Pentagon.
“We would like to have the Moon,” Navy Vice Chief P. Murugesan told reporters on July 14, acknowledging that its goal of a 200-ship navy by 2027 was ambitious.
The vessels on India’s wish list show Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intent on expanding the navy’s influence from Africa to the Western Pacific. Most of them will be made in India, a sign that moves to upgrade the country’s shipyards are starting to pay off for the world’s biggest importer of weapons. 100 Warships
India plans to add at least 100 new warships, including two aircraft carriers, as well as three nuclear powered submarines capable of firing nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. It will also tender for submarine-rescue vessels, a first for a navy that’s operated submarines for four decades.
“What we are seeing here is a significant ramping up of blue-water capacity,” said Collin Koh Swee Lean, an associate research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. The expansion would help maintain India’s regional naval supremacy and project power, he said.
Part of that strategy involves overseas sales. India recently made its first ever warship export to the island nation of Mauritius. The patrol vessel was built by Kolkata-based Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd., one of four government-run shipyards.
The same company is bidding to win a Philippine tender for warships, and last year India agreed to sell Vietnam four offshore patrol boats. Both nations compete with China for territory in disputed waters. Billionaire Invests
India wants to produce all of the components on its naval vessels domestically by 2030, Navy Chief Admiral RK Dhowan said this month. Now it only makes about a third of weapons and sensors, and about 60 percent of propulsion systems.
To make that happen, Dhowan wants private firms involved. Billionaire Anil Ambani said this month his Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group Ltd. would make a 50 billion rupee ($780 million) investment in a shipyard on India’s western coastline.
While India is capable of building warships, it relies on the U.S., Russia and Europe for technology and lags the world’s bigger players, according to Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
“India does not have a very glorious record in defense manufacturing, and certainly not for exports,” he said. “Things may change for the better with the private sector.”
India is also reaching out to the region. It’s boosting ties with Mauritius and Seychelles, and has offered to help Myanmar modernize its navy. India is also hosting naval exercises with the U.S. and Japan later this year, and holding its first-ever drills with Australia in September.
Chinese experts led by Defense Ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Yang Yujun told Indian media this month that clashes are possible if India views the adjacent ocean as its “backyard.”
“India wants to take a leadership role in the Indian Ocean and ultimately become the predominant naval power,” ANU’s Brewster said. “Its moves reflect an instinctive view among many in Delhi that if the Indian Ocean is not actually India’s Ocean, then in an ideal world it ought to be.”
With assistance from Kamran Haider in Islamabad, Bibhudatta Pradhan and Natalie Obiko Pearson in New Delhi and Ting Shi in Hong Kong

India needs to shed its concerns about Chinese sensitivities and embrace its Indian Ocean partners.

Pushan Das and Sylvia Mishra, The Diplomat
28 July 2015

The scope of the upcoming Indo-U.S. Malabar naval exercise has expanded to a trilateral that includes Japan. This will be the first multilateral Malabar exercise to be held in waters near India since 2007.
However, the exclusion of Australia from the Malabar exercise reflects New Delhi’s penchant for hedging against the prospect of Chinese opposition. New Delhi’s cautious approach to the exercise also reflects an institutional aversion to multilateral exercises geographically close to India. Given the rapidly expanding presence of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), can New Delhi afford to hold on to these hesitancies while simultaneously pursuing its quest to be the dominant security player in the region?
China’s growing naval profile in the Indian Ocean creates a new geopolitical reality that India needs to manage. To adjust its policies to the rapidly changing complexion of the Indian Ocean, New Delhi needs to proactively engage its maritime partners by holding trilateral and quadrilateral naval exercises in the Indian Ocean. Yet while India has not shied away from conducting bilateral exercises, it has a maintained a strong reluctance to hold multilateral exercises in the Indian Ocean owing to Chinese sensitivities. Given that China shows little apparent concern about India’s vulnerabilities in the Indian Ocean in light of the growing China-Pakistan nexus, India should shed its inhibitions and engage in institutionalized multilateral military exercises and engagements in the region.
In May 2007, a proposal put forth by Shinzo Abe, then in his first tenure as prime minister of Japan, of an arc of freedom and democracy comprising the U.S., Japan, India and Australia, the informal quadrilateral was formed. Building on that idea, senior officials met on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Manila in May 2007 to discuss the possibility of expanding naval exercises. These discussions led to the decision to expand Indo-U.S. naval cooperation, which had begun in 1992, to include the naval fleets of Australia, Singapore and Japan. The Malabar exercise is an important symbol of India-U.S. naval cooperation in the Indian Ocean, and the decision to include likeminded countries in the exercise was the first of its kind, with strategic undertones for the region.
The week-long series of training and development exercises in the Bay of Bengal involved more than 20,000 personnel. It was significant for two reasons: First, it symbolized a transformational shift away from the traditional India-U.S. security policies during the Cold War period, such as the 1971 dispatch of Task Force 74 to the Bay of Bengal. Second, Malabar 2007 involved unprecedented air defense exercises, anti-submarine warfare training, and a host of professional exchanges between ships and aircraft. It was also the last multilateral version of Malabar to be held in the IOR.
Chinese Sensitivities
India’s military exercises with different countries over the years show one clear pattern, an aversion to certain types of multilateral exercises near its coast or on its territory. This policy is driven by a desire to avoid being drawn into military alliances. More recently, however, the tendency has been to avoid being drawn into alliances or networks that might threaten China.
Certainly, India has not been averse to multilateral and bilateral exercises in themselves. Indeed, over the years it has conducted and participated in many. IBSAMBAR (India, Brazil & South Africa), Varuna (India & France), Milan (16 countries from the Indian Ocean Region), Simbex (India & Singapore), KONKAN (India & U.K.) are just a few in a long
list of naval exercises that have held in the three sea bodies surrounding India. These exercises have not drawn protests from China as most of the countries involved have not been claimants in the South China Sea.
In contrast, the 2007 Malabar exercise included Japan and Australia – two countries in military alliances with the United States. The fact that the area of operation was in the Bay of Bengal did little to assuage Chinese concerns and played straight into China’s Malacca Strait Dilemma.
Indian participation in exercises in the Pacific like RIMPAC or Air Force exercises on the U.S. mainland like Red Flag have drawn little criticism from China. However, a multilateral exercise like Malabar was seen as a putative maritime entente aimed at containing China. Unsurprisingly, in 2007 it drew a sharp reaction from China in spite of the then U.S. Navy’s Pacific Commander Timothy J. Keating observing that the maneuvers were not aimed at forming a quadrilateral front against China. He stated, “Let me emphasize, there is no effort on our part or any of these other countries (participating in the exercises) to isolate China or put Beijing in a closet.” In the wake of those exercises, the multinational component was shifted out of the Indian Ocean, and the Malabar exercises in the Indian Ocean became a bilateral India-U.S. affair. There is considerable sensitivity in New Delhi regarding the scope and symbolism of the Malabar exercises. New Delhi has on several previous occasions rebuffed U.S. attempts to include Japan as another participant in the exercises. And during the India-Japan-Australia dialogue last month, when Australia expressed interest in participating in the exercises along with Japan, India was reluctant.
Yet if India is set to have a clear and cogent Indian Ocean strategy, this deep-rooted hesitance to host multilaterals in the Indian Ocean region will need to change. By excluding Australia from this year’s Malabar exercise, even as it prepares to hold its first bilateral with that country, India is doing little to scale down Beijing’s reaction. Does a three country entente really look less threatening than a four or five country one? Irrespective of Australia’s inclusion, Beijing would be uncomfortable with the Malabars and India may as well just shed its inhibitions and stop pandering to Chinese concerns.
Multilateral Military Links
Recently a Chinese Yuan-class 335 submarine docked at Pakistan’s Karachi port. The Indian Navy played down the revelation. The Navy’s Vice Chief Admiral P. Murugesan insisted that the “docking of a submarine belonging to some other country in a third country itself is not a big concern.” However India’s inability to detect not only the sub before it docked at Karachi but also the support ship accompanying it is alarming, given the fact that the vessels circumnavigated India.
New Delhi has over the last few years begun setting up a chain of costal surveillance radar (CSR) stations in the IOR. Apart from Seychelles, Mauritius, Maldives, Madagascar and Muscat, there are six Coastal Surveillance Radar Stations based in Sri Lanka. These stations assist India in monitoring ships sailing past these regions, helping the Navy observe the movements of all ships operating in the Indian Ocean. The IOR surveillance project is widely seen as India’s response to China’s aggressive new operations in the region and reports that Beijing is pushing for the establishment of 18 deepwater posts with the African and Asian littoral. While the costal surveillance network is a step in the right direction, it will not help India’s woefully lacking anti-submarine assets detect underwater threats. Indeed, the inability to detect the submarine supply ship that docked at Karachi highlights the critical gaps in India’s capabilities.
Creating partnerships to plug these critical gaps is vital for India. And military exercises and interoperability will be hold the key in creating military-to-military linkages that can be leveraged for joint surveillance. This could simply be sharing information or it could be logistical cooperation to achieve more comprehensive coverage. The U.S. and France both have a number of bases in the IOR region and are equally concerned by China’s increasing footprint.
However several agreements that would enable greater cooperation between the Indian and U.S. armed forces face political opposition in India. Some of these agreements, like the Logistics Support Agreement, would facilitate increased use of shared logistical services. Similarly, agreements like the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geospatial Cooperation (BECA) would provide logistical support and enable exchanges of communication and related equipment; Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA) would require the supply of equipment to India that is compatible with American systems. Signing these “foundational agreements” is critical to enhancing interoperability in the Indian Ocean.
It is time for India to leverage existing and emerging multilateral platforms to engage deeply with partner countries and take on a greater leadership role in the IOR. Given the centrality of the Indian Ocean to its national security, New Delhi cannot afford to ignore any short or long term threats, and must begin to be proactive, rather than reactive.

When the news broke on Monday that the Swedish marine salvage company Ocean X had discovered a sunken submarine close to Sweden’s coast it jarred a region otherwise deep in its summer lull.
News sites provided minute-by-minute updates on the revelation throughout the day, and the story led the evening news in not only Sweden, but also Denmark, Norway and Finland. Journalists, naval experts, and defense wonks quickly chimed in. Based on the size of the submarine — about 70 feet — many argued that it must be a Russian or Soviet mini-submarine, lost during an operation or exercise against Sweden.
Perhaps this was the submarine that eluded the Swedish navy last October in the Stockholm archipelago? Or was it from the late Cold War period, when Swedish warships hunted and even attacked suspected Soviet submarines? Regardless, the implications of the discovery were potentially huge, and could lead to “an immediate crisis between Sweden and Russia,” as Sweden’s largest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, put it in an editorial.
By Tuesday it was increasingly clear that the submarine was of an older vintage, more than likely Som, an imperial Russian navy submarine that was lost with all hands after colliding with a Swedish merchantman in 1916. Interestingly, Som began its service life as the Fulton, an experimental U.S. boat built in 1901 that was sold to an increasingly desperate Russian empire during the Russo-Japanese war, where the Som briefly saw action. To be fair to Swedish submarine-watchers, the grainy footage released by Ocean X showed a submarine virtually intact and with little organic growth; hardly what one would expect from a submarine marking a century in the deep. But such are the environmental conditions in the Baltic Sea.
So while the recent revelation will not be the final proof of Russian incursions deep into Swedish territorial waters in recent history, the sturm und drang (loose translation: storm and stress) surrounding the event says something about how tense the Baltic Sea region has become over the past few years.
Russia has indeed stepped up its military activity in the region, in order to test the resolve of NATO and signal Russia’s return to the European stage. Swedish, Finnish, and Lithuanian research ships and cable layers have been harassed by Russian warships and buzzed by Russian navy helicopters.
Finland and Sweden have both launched anti-submarine warfare operations in pursuit of suspected Russian submarines in their territorial waters. Russian warships have strayed into the economic zones of the Baltic states, and keep up a more intense rate of exercises and patrols in the Baltic Sea. Meanwhile, in the air above the Baltic Sea, Russian attack jets have practiced attack runs against targets in both Sweden and Denmark.
Last year, a U.S. reconnaissance flight was chased into Swedish air space by aggressively maneuvering Russian fighters. Often flying without their transponders on, Russian military aircraft have also come dangerously close to commercial aviation.
This has not come without a response from NATO and the countries of the region. U.S. Naval Forces Europe’s BALTOPS is a long-standing naval exercise in the Baltic Sea, but this summer’s iteration was significantly larger than in the past, and included amphibious landings in Sweden and Poland as well as B-52s dropping sea mines to thwart an aggressor. Poland is eyeing a new class of submarines, while Sweden has rapidly funded the procurement of a new submarine class as well.
Ashore, the United States, along with its NATO allies, currently rotates forces through the Baltic states for exercises. Washington has also committed to pre-positioning heavy weapons and equipment in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, in order for U.S. forces to be able to quickly fall in on those countries for exercises or contingencies. In other words, NATO is settling in for the long haul of deterring an increasingly belligerent Russia in the Baltic Sea region.
Som is an echo from Europe’s past, and the timing of its discovery is especially poignant since the continent is currently marking the centennial of the Great War, a conflagration that fundamentally changed the European order and broke Europe’s great powers.
Today, the Baltic Sea is the stage for an emerging contest that could very well determine the future of the European security order.

Sweden said on Tuesday the wreck of a submarine found off its coast appeared to be a Czarist-era Russian vessel that collided with a Swedish ship about a century ago.
"We are most likely talking about the Russian submarine the Som (Catfish) which sank after a collision with a Swedish vessel in 1916 during World War I and before the Russian revolution," the Swedish Armed Forces said.
Speculation had been swirling about the origins of the vessel after Swedish divers announced Monday that a submarine had been found about 1.5 nautical miles off the coast of central Sweden.
The announcement came nine months after a high-profile hunt for a mystery submarine in Swedish waters, suspected to be Russian, and some speculated that the divers had chanced upon a modern Russian vessel.
The Swedish military however quashed rumors and said the vessel was old, referring to the design of the submarine and the lettering on the outer shell seen in the pictures of the wreck taken by the divers.
The military added it did not think a full technical analysis was necessary.
Experts identified it as an Imperial Russian Navy sub that sank with an 18-member crew in May 1916 after a collision with a Swedish vessel.
'Immortalise the Memory'
Russian experts have identified the vessel as a Som class submarine, built for the Imperial Russian Navy in 1904 and integrated into the Baltic fleet.
"This is clearly the Som, judging by its location and design," submarine expert Andrei Nikolayev told AFP.
He said the find was very important for Russia.
"As they say, the war is not over until the last soldier has been buried," said Nikolayev, who himself served on submarines.
He said there were several theories as to why the submarine had sunk, adding that its commander was inexperienced.
"A lieutenant was in charge of our submarine," he said.
Konstantin Bogdanov, head of a state-backed team of wreck divers in Russia, also said that the discovery appeared to be the Som, offering his team's help to study the find together with the Swedish divers.
"We are ready to conduct a joint expedition," he said, stressing that it would be important to "immortalize the memory" of those who perished.
Finding the remains of a submarine is more difficult than locating a sunken ship, Bogdanov said, stressing that the latest discovery was a rare occurrence.
Last year Bogdanov's team helped Estonian divers identify a wreck in the Baltic Sea as the Czarist-era Russian submarine known as The Shark (Akula).
'Completely Intact'
Stefan Hogeborn, a diver with the Ocean X Team that made the discovery, said the mini-sub was "completely intact" with "no visible damage to the hull" and the hatches were closed.
"It is unclear how old the submarine is and how long it has been laying at the sea floor, but the Cyrillic letters on the hull indicate that it is Russian," he said in a statement on Monday.
Ocean X Team said the vessel was around 20 meters (66 feet) long and 3.5 meters wide (11.5 feet), adding it was planning a new expedition to study the wreck more closely.
In October, Sweden's navy launched a massive hunt for a foreign submarine, suspected to be Russian, in the Stockholm archipelago.
The military subsequently confirmed that "a mini-submarine" had violated its territorial waters, but was never able to establish the vessel's nationality.
Last year's hunt for the mystery vessel came at a time of particularly high tensions between Russia and the West over the conflict in Ukraine.

350 more ships needed.

Wyatt Olson, Stars and Stripes, July 29

To meet global security demands, the U.S. Navy likely needs 325-350 more ships, or 50-75 more than current levels, said the former head of U.S. Pacific Command.

“As our Navy gets a little bit smaller, we’re facing increasing challenges for funding to get a smaller number of ships to a larger number of ports to demonstrate our readiness and partnership and our presence to all those countries in the Indo-Pacific region,” retired Adm. Timothy J. Keating told reporters Tuesday during a conference call hosted by Powell Tate, a public relations agency that represents U.S. shipbuilders.
The Navy has 273 deployable battle force ships, according to its website.
Keating headed PACOM from 2007-09 and is now on the board of advisers for defense contractor Camber Corporation.
Keating and Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense analyst with American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, made the case that underfunding and overextending the Navy will have a direct impact on U.S. consumers, aside from national and international security.
The Navy is the de facto high-seas police force protecting vast shipments of food, clothing and electronics equipment made overseas and delivered by container ship to the U.S.
“If there isn’t a cop there on the street to patrol the beat, then people start to get into trouble,” Eaglen said. “It’s no different on the high sea; the Navy and Marines and Coast Guard being there to help prevent the threat of piracy.”
Stable and relatively low prices at the gas pumps are enabled by the U.S. military, she said. Having the Navy stationed at critical shipping choke points around the world – primarily Turkish Straits, Suez Canal, Strait of Hormuz and Strait of Malacca – wards off disruptions that could cause spikes in oil prices, she said.
The Navy also provides security for what’s beneath the water, such as fiber optic cables essential to the cyber realm, Eaglen said. Ninety-five percent of the world’s transcontinental voice and data traffic travels through those undersea cables, according to data provided by Powell Tate.
The Navy should be beefed up to continue providing adequate security, Keating and Eaglen contend.
“If you just look at a simple supply-demand matrix, we know the current Navy is simply too small,” Eaglen said.
That starts with more aircraft carriers, they said.
“I’ve heard senior Navy officials say they have an 11-carrier Navy for a 15-carrier world,” Eaglen said. “And actually we’re a single-digit carrier nation because one’s always in layup and Congress has waived the 11-carrier requirement, so we really have nine carriers.”
The Navy’s deployment tour length has expanded over time, which indicates it is “simply too small and that the demand is not following the requirements,” she said.
The Navy also needs another six submarines, Keating said, noting that it should begin replacing the Ohio-class Trident nuclear submarine fleet, slated to begin in 2029.
“That’ll be an important and expensive program for us nationally and a strategic matter,” he said.
Because so much of the world’s goods are produced in China and shipped through the South China Sea, that relatively small body of water is garnering more and more of the Navy’s attention – particularly as China continues to assert sovereignty claims over many of the sea’s uninhabited islands.
“Unfettered access to maritime domains depends upon frequent presence of United States Navy ships and the Marines on some of those ships,” Keating said. “I am convinced that it’s of vital national and international importance to all of us to maintain that presence throughout the Asia Pacific region – which calls for a stronger Navy over the many years ahead.”
Keating was asked whether China’s sovereignty claims over the Spratly Islands, near the Philippines, where it has expanded tiny atolls by hundreds of acres with dredged sand, creates navigational issues for the Navy.
“I wouldn’t hesitate to fly over them or steam very close to them,” he said.

HONG KONG/NEW DELHI – In a dock opening onto the Hooghly River near central Kolkata, one of India’s most lethal new weapons is going through a final outfit.
The Kadmatt is a submarine killer, bristling with technology to sniff out and destroy underwater predators. It’s the second of four warships in India’s first dedicated anti-submarine force – a key part of plans to spend at least $61 billion on expanding the navy’s size by about half in 12 years.
The build-up is mostly aimed at deterring China from establishing a foothold in the Indian Ocean. It also serves another goal: Transforming India’s warship-building industry into an exporting force that can supply the region, including U.S. partners in Asia wary of China’s increased assertiveness.
“India’s naval build-up is certainly occurring in the context of India moving towards a greater alignment with U.S. and its allies to balance China,” said David Brewster, a specialist in Indo-Pacific security at the Australian National University in Canberra. “India wants to be able to demonstrate that Beijing’s activities in South Asia do not come without a cost, and Delhi is also able to play in China’s neighborhood.”
China showed its growing naval prowess when it deployed a nuclear-powered submarine to patrol the Indian Ocean for the first time last year, while a diesel-powered one docked twice in Sri Lanka. India says another Chinese submarine docked in May and July in Pakistan, which is reportedly looking to buy eight submarines in what would be China’s biggest arms export deal.
Obama Help
The U.S.’s Seventh Fleet has patrolled Asia’s waters since World War II and is backing India’s naval expansion. On a January visit to New Delhi, President Barack Obama pledged to explore ways of sharing aircraft carrier technology. The two countries also flagged the need to safeguard maritime security in the South China Sea, where neither has territorial claims.
India’s present fleet of 137 ships falls far short of the more than 300 vessels in China, which has Asia’s biggest
navy. China boasts at least 62 submarines, including four capable of firing nuclear ballistic missiles, according to the Pentagon.
“We would like to have the Moon,” Navy Vice Chief P. Murugesan told reporters on July 14, acknowledging that its goal of a 200-ship navy by 2027 was ambitious.
The vessels on India’s wish list show Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intent on expanding the navy’s influence from Africa to the Western Pacific. Most of them will be made in India, a sign that moves to upgrade the country’s shipyards are starting to pay off for the world’s biggest importer of weapons.
100 Warships
India plans to add at least 100 new warships, including two aircraft carriers, as well as three nuclear powered submarines capable of firing nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. It will also tender for submarine-rescue vessels, a first for a navy that’s operated submarines for four decades.
“What we are seeing here is a significant ramping up of blue-water capacity,” said Collin Koh Swee Lean, an associate research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. The expansion would help maintain India’s regional naval supremacy and project power, he said.
Part of that strategy involves overseas sales. India recently made its first ever warship export to the island nation of Mauritius. The patrol vessel was built by Kolkata-based Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd., one of four government-run shipyards.
The same company is bidding to win a Philippine tender for warships, and last year India agreed to sell Vietnam four offshore patrol boats. Both nations compete with China for territory in disputed waters.
Billionaire Invests
India wants to produce all of the components on its naval vessels domestically by 2030, Navy Chief Admiral RK Dhowan said this month. Now it only makes about a third of weapons and sensors, and about 60 percent of propulsion systems.
To make that happen, Dhowan wants private firms involved. Billionaire Anil Ambani said this month his Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group Ltd. would make a 50 billion rupee ($780 million) investment in a shipyard on India’s western coastline.
While India is capable of building warships, it relies on the U.S., Russia and Europe for technology and lags the world’s bigger players, according to Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
“India does not have a very glorious record in defense manufacturing, and certainly not for exports,” he said. “Things may change for the better with the private sector.”
India is also reaching out to the region. It’s boosting ties with Mauritius and Seychelles, and has offered to help Myanmar modernize its navy. India is also hosting naval exercises with the U.S. and Japan later this year, and holding its first-ever drills with Australia in September.
Chinese experts led by Defense Ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Yang Yujun told Indian media this month that clashes are possible if India views the adjacent ocean as its “backyard.”
“India wants to take a leadership role in the Indian Ocean and ultimately become the predominant naval power,” ANU’s Brewster said. “Its moves reflect an instinctive view among many in Delhi that if the Indian Ocean is not actually India’s Ocean, then in an ideal world it ought to be.”
With assistance from Kamran Haider in Islamabad, Bibhudatta Pradhan and Natalie Obiko Pearson in New Delhi and Ting Shi in Hong Kong

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Update: This story has been updated to include a Navy statement regarding a Defense Department Inspector General review of Adm. Richardson's remarks.

Political drama surrounds the Navy’s Ohio replacement submarine, as the service tries to secure funding for its highest priority program.
Much hangs on the outcome of the high stakes budget battle playing out in Washington, D.C., which will shape the future of Navy shipbuilding and potentially have major effects on the other services and the industrial base.
A key issue in question is how to pay for the next generation of ballistic missile submarines — known as the SSBN(X) or the Ohio replacement — which the Navy says are needed to replace the aging Ohio-class vessels currently in service.
“The Navy is going to buy the Ohio replacement,” said Bryan Clark, a naval expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “The nation is not going to accept the Navy not building a new ballistic missile submarine.”
Ballistic missile submarines — nicknamed “boomers” — are the centerpiece of the nation’s nuclear deterrent.
Moving stealthily undersea, they are considered the most survivable leg of the nuclear triad. By 2018, when the U.S. military adjusts to the terms of the New START treaty, submarines will carry about 70 percent of America’s deployed nuclear arsenal, according to Navy officials.
But the Ohio-class boats that carry the missiles will begin reaching the end of their service lives in 2027, with the final one scheduled to retire in 2040. The Navy hopes to start procuring the Ohio replacement in 2021, and ultimately buy 12 of them to replace the 14 Ohio-class ships.
But building a dozen SSBN(X)s will be enormously expensive. In a March report, the Government Accountability Office estimated the total cost of the Ohio replacement to be $96 billion. In December the Congressional Budget Office came up with an even higher estimate, putting the total price tag at $102 billion to $107 billion, depending on R&D expenditures.
The Navy is expected to spend about $10 billion over the next five years on development and advance procurement even before the first ship is built, according to the Pentagon’s future years defense program.
Navy officials have rejected suggestions that the service could build fewer than 12 Ohio replacements in order to save money.
“Anything below the current authorized number of boats for the Ohio replacement will prevent us from meeting our national commitment requirements. We simply can’t do it,” Vice Adm. Terry Benedict, the Navy’s director of strategic systems programs, said at a breakfast discussion in Washington, D.C., in June.
Defense analysts said that no consideration is being given to nixing the SSBN(X), despite its price. Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said Congress supports the idea of building a new class of boomers.
“There’s no question [on the Hill about] whether we need the Ohio-class replacement,” she said. “Nobody says, ‘Why do we need this nuclear submarine?’”
The big disagreement is over how to pay for it.
If the service is to fully carry out its 30-year shipbuilding plan, analysts estimate that the Navy would need an additional $4 billion to $7 billion per year over historical funding levels during the 15-year period when the SSBN(X) is being procured. Without the additional money, the Ohio replacement program would likely crowd out spending on other key vessels, such as the Virginia-class attack submarine, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer or even the Ford-class aircraft carrier.
One potential scenario outlined by the CBO would see two aircraft carriers, 17 attack submarines, 20 destroyers, 19 littoral combat ships and six amphibious ships cut from the Navy’s projected fleet to compensate for SSBN(X) costs.
“The Ohio replacement program, if funded through the Navy’s shipbuilding account, could make it considerably more difficult for the Navy to procure other kinds of ships in desired numbers, unless the shipbuilding account were increased to accommodate the additional funding needs of the Ohio replacement program,” the Congressional Research Service said in a March report.
Senior Navy officials have said that it would be “unacceptable” for other shipbuilding programs to get derailed.
“What the Navy needs to be thinking about — and is starting to think about — is how do they protect those other ships?” Clark said.
Some lawmakers and Navy officials are hoping to at least partially fund the Ohio replacement program through a special defense-wide account separate from the regular shipbuilding budget. In the fiscal year 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress created a National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund for this purpose, but lawmakers have clashed over whether any money should be put into it.
In the fiscal year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, the House Armed Services Committee authorized $1.4 billion for research, development, testing and evaluation of the SSBN(X). But the House Appropriations Committee voted to prohibit putting any money into the deterrence fund.
The matter came to a head before the full House in June, when the fund’s supporters tried to override the appropriations committee and proposed a legislative amendment to have the funding restored.
“This [fund] makes sure that down the road we are not forced to choose between building a replacement ballistic missile submarine or a destroyer or an aircraft carrier,” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., said during a House debate on the issue.
Critics of the fund said it would unfairly take money away from other Defense Department organizations.
“If the president determines the Ohio-class replacement is a must-fund platform, then the Navy should buy it, just as it has every other submarine in its inventory that our committee has supported. Establishing a special fund to pay for the submarine is an attempt to have other military services pay for what is a Navy responsibility,” said Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., during the House debate.
Eaglen, who thinks using a defense-wide deterrence fund is the wrong approach, said it is hard to weigh the programmatic tradeoffs at this point.
“It’s very unclear where this money is coming from within Defense and what other priorities are going to suffer as a result,” she said.
In the House, supporters of the deterrence fund prevailed and were able to get the $1.4 billion restored by a vote of 321-111.
The Senate version of the NDAA also authorized $1.4 billion for RDT&E on the SSBN(X), but the legislative body has yet to pass its fiscal year 2016 appropriations bill.
How things will shake out in the coming years is anyone’s guess.
Clark anticipates that the Navy will receive additional money for shipbuilding, but not at much as it wants.
“I also believe that the Congress will be able to put some money into the sea-based deterrent fund,” he said. “It will provide some money to help defray the cost of the Ohio replacement. … It won’t be enough to cover it but it will help.”
Eaglen said the Navy has historically been effective at making its case for obtaining more money for shipbuilding, which gives the service an advantage when the budget pie is divvied up.
“Political savviness brings you budget dollars,” Eaglen said. “I think the Navy and Marine Corps … are the most effective of all the services at their self-lobbying and self-promotion. … They [Navy officials] spend a lot of time educating people on why a strong Navy is good for the country.”
The Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, has accused high-ranking Navy officials of overstepping the line in trying to secure funding for the SSBN(X) at a Naval Submarine League symposium in October.
“We have not yet figured out how we will pay for Ohio replacement, and we should take no comfort on the general commitment that ‘we’ll get this done,’” said Director of Naval Reactors Adm. John Richardson at the symposium last fall, according to a published transcript of his remarks.
“Increase support. Inform those in your sphere of influence — everyone from your congressmen to your local PTA. Look for ways to make people aware of how vital this is to the nation’s security. The stakes are extremely high. … We all need to do it,” he told attendees.
Rear Adm. Joe Tofalo, the Navy director of undersea warfare, offered his assistance to those at the symposium.
“If anybody needs help in strategic messaging, then you call … and let us know,” he said, according to the transcript. “If you need trifolds, priorities briefs, talking points for your congressman, we are more than happy to support you.”
Danielle Brian, the executive director of POGO, sent a letter in June to the Government Accountability Office expressing concerns that Richardson and Tofalo “spent taxpayer money on publicity or propaganda to engage in grassroots lobbying on the proposed procurement of the Ohio replacement program … and the creation of a separate sea-based deterrence fund to pay for it.”
In an email to National Defense, GAO spokesman Chuck Young said, “GAO issues legal opinions … but not at the request of the general public. However, GAO is reviewing the letter to determine appropriate action or the entity to whom it should be properly referred.”
POGO sent a similar letter to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"To ensure that Adm. Richardson's comments were within appropriate Department of Defense (DoD) and civil guidelines, the Navy requested the DoD Inspector General review his remarks and provide feedback at the earliest opportunity. That process, which concluded today, found no wrong doing on the part Adm. Richardson," Navy Chief of Information Rear Adm. Dawn Cutler said in a July 21 statement.
Richardson has been nominated to be the next chief of naval operations — the service’s top post — while Tofalo has been tapped to be the next commander of naval submarine forces. McCain’s office did not respond to questions about whether the accusations would affect the senator’s decision to confirm the two officers when his committee considers their nominations.
If the Navy doesn’t receive the extra money it needs for shipbuilding, it could have major strategic and industrial consequences, according to defense analysts.
Clark said the Navy could compensate for a smaller fleet by basing more ships overseas, but that would not fully mitigate the problem.
“You might not have very many ships back in CONUS [the continental United States] that would be able to surge … against a larger adversary like a China or a Russia,” he said. “If you wanted to start increasing the number of ships that are present in an effort to manage an escalating crisis, you may not be able to do that as easily. So there would be a deterrence impact from this smaller fleet.”
Overworking a smaller fleet could create a vicious cycle by increasing the amount of time that ships need to spend in maintenance, he said.
“You can get into kind of a death spiral. If the fleet gets to a small enough point and the demands don’t go down you will end up with a fleet that continues to shrink,” he said.
Buying fewer ships or extending procurement timelines would damage the industrial base, analysts said.
“The industrial base will be hit pretty dramatically because if they go down to building only one destroyer a year and one submarine a year to use the money to pay for the Ohio replacement … and then amphibious ships are reduced dramatically, that’s going to affect specific shipyards,” Clark said.
He cited Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and Bath Ironworks in Bath, Maine, as particularly vulnerable because of the types of ships they produce.
“You could probably manage it so none of them go under outright. But you would end up spending more money per ship because you will end up … [with] this very inefficient construction cycle where you’ve got parts of the shipyard that are idle unnecessarily. So you’ll end up paying more per ship and then you will also end up with the shipyards not being able to make the kinds of investment to improve productivity or to incorporate new technologies,” he said.
Perhaps the biggest long-term blow would be to the shipbuilding workforce, experts said, because a lot of highly skilled workers could potentially lose their jobs if there is not enough work to keep them around.
“It will be difficult for the shipyards to get them back” after they find new jobs, Clark said. “It’s the human part that really affects you. The human capital is pretty valuable in the shipbuilding business.”
Andrew Hunter, a defense industrial base expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said a major cutback in shipyard work could cost “thousands” of jobs. That is something that lawmakers from major shipbuilding states want to avoid.
“There is a very clear reason why, as a result of their constituencies, that these [Navy funding] issues are a top level of concern for them,” Hunter said.

STOCKHOLM – The Swedish military is studying a video taken by shipwreck hunters who say it shows a wrecked submarine just off the eastern coast of Sweden which appears to be Russian, a spokesman said on Monday.
The discovery comes less than a year after Swedish troops and ships unsuccessfully hunted for a Russian submarine reportedly cited near Stockholm, in the country's biggest military mobilization since the Cold War.
Swedish Armed Forces spokesman Anders Kallin did not say whether the military also believed it was a Russian submarine.
"We choose not to comment on it before we have seen more material. We will continue the analysis together with the company in the coming days," Kallin said.
Ocean X Team, the company behind the discovery, said on its website: "It is unclear how old the submarine is and for how long it has been at the bottom of the sea, but the Cyrillic letters on the hull indicate that it is Russian."
One of the men who discovered the submarine, Dennis Asberg, told the Expressen newspaper it looked modern. But one expert quoted by the paper said he believed it was a Russian submarine that sank in 1916.
Concerns about possible incursions by Russian submarines have increased as relations between Moscow and the West have worsened due to events in Ukraine.
During the Cold War, the navy repeatedly chased suspected Soviet submarines along its coast with depth charges.
In 1981, in an incident known as "Whiskey on the Rocks," a Soviet nuclear Whiskey-class submarine was stranded near a naval base deep inside Swedish waters after it ran aground, causing a diplomatic standoff.
There have been many false alarms. In 1995, then-Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson said the military on several occasions thought it had detected submarines only to find many of the underwater sounds were made by minks.
In April, the Finnish military used handheld underwater depth charges as a warning against what it suspected was a submarine in waters off Helsinki.

Monday, July 27, 2015

At Long Last, Hollywood To Tell The Story Of The USS Indianapolis
Will Higgins, Indianapolis Star, July 26

As the 70th anniversary of the July 30 sinking approaches, two major motion pictures are in the works.
The story of the USS Indianapolis has been often told.
Yet despite the violence and horror of what is considered the worst disaster in U.S. naval history, the story is still not widely known.
At least seven books have been written, but books about World War II history don’t usually attract wide attention. In 1991 a movie was done, but it was a made-for-TV effort starring Stacy Keach.
Suddenly though, as the 70th anniversary of the July 30 sinking approaches, two major motion pictures are in the works. “USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage,” starring Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage, began filming last month. Another project, still in development, would involve Robert Downey Jr., either on screen or in a producer role.
For the Indianapolis’ crewmen, who are in their 80s and 90s, the widespread recognition that a major motion picture can bring has been a long time coming. Although many of them were haunted by their ordeal, “they want their story to be remembered,” said Maria Bullard, the daughter of survivor Harold Eck and the chairman of Second Watch, a club for the crewmen’s families.
“I have a whole box of documentaries,” Bullard said, “but a Hollywood movie is the best way to get this story across to a worldwide audience. We all just feel like it’s time for this to be told on the big screen.”
The sinking of the USS Indianapolis occurred the night of July 30, 1945. The ship was returning from a U.S. base on Tinian Island in the Philippine Sea, where it had delivered enriched uranium and other components for an atomic bomb. That bomb would later be dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
A Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into the Indianapolis. The ship sank inside 15 minutes. The 900-some crewmen not killed in the initial attack went into the water, poorly equipped, some without so much as a life jacket.
The men huddled in small groups and wrestled with dehydration, hunger, hallucinations and sharks.
“There soon were hundreds of fins around us,” wrote Eck in the 2002 book “Only 317 Survived,” a compilation of survivors’ stories. “The first attack I saw was on a sailor who had drifted away from the group. I heard yelling and screaming and saw him thrashing ... then I just saw red foamy water.
“My legs dangled in the water and were constantly being bumped by the sharks swimming below. I curled my legs up under me as close as I could.”
Crewmen died for lack of water, too, and of exposure. Survivors would remove the life jackets from crewmen who died in the water and set them adrift. Sharks would come, Eck wrote, “and the floating dead were taken in a feeding frenzy.”
A rescue came on Day 5. Nearly 600 men had perished in the sea.
Such drama would seem to be the stuff of box office gold.
But unlike “Unbroken,” the World War II true story that was made into a movie last year and posted $30 million in ticket sales its first weekend, the USS Indianapolis story did not end happily. Most of the crewmen died. Their well-liked commander, Capt. Charles B. McVay, was court-martialed and driven to suicide. The ship’s mission, though it did speed the war to its conclusion, led to death and destruction of a scope never before seen in human history.
“The overall picture is depressing,” said Tim Irwin, artistic director of the nonprofit arts organization Heartland Film, “so you’d have to focus on an individual. Often they make it an amalgamation. I’m guessing they’ll find a more positive side.”
Filmmakers typically do.
With “Titanic,” the 1997 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, director James Cameron turned the story of the doomed ocean liner into not just a special-effects maritime disaster but a testament to everlasting love. It ranks among the biggest grossing films of all time.
Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor,” the 2001 film starring Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale, is about the deadly surprise attack but also about human bonding.
At least seven movies have been made about Pearl Harbor, and 22 about the Titanic.
Ironically, it was a movie, Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster “Jaws,” that gave the Indianapolis story its first wide audience by way of an arresting four-minute monologue by Robert Shaw’s character, Quint.
The flurry of big screen action now would seem to be a coincidence – and proof that making a major motion picture is a huge, fraught undertaking. For years the Indianapolis survivors had their hopes raised then dashed as one film project after another started, then stopped.
Prospects seemed especially promising in 2001 after the Indianapolis story got a happy ending – the official exoneration of Capt. McVay. An indomitable 11-year-old named Hunter Scott, who after learning of the Indianapolis while watching “Jaws,” led the charge to exonerate the captain.
Later that year, Entertainment Weekly reported that Mel Gibson was mulling playing McVay in a film based on Doug Stanton’s best-seller “In Harm’s Way.” A director was picked: Barry Levinson. A title was picked: “The Captain and the Shark.”
Nothing came of it.
Other industry reports followed of projects involving luminaries such as Ron Howard, Russell Crowe and J.J. Abrams.
Nothing came of those either.
And now, the deluge.
“USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage,” which is directed by Mario Van Peebles (“New Jack City” and episodes of TV’s “Empire,” “Nashville” and “Law & Order”), also stars Tom Sizemore (“Saving Private Ryan,” “Black Hawk Down”) and Thomas Jane (TV’s “Hung”).
The Downey film would focus on the exoneration of Capt. McVay. The first script was tossed out, and a second one is expected to be completed by the end of the month, said Hunter Scott, an adult now who is in the Navy.
Scott said movie rights have been purchased for at least two other books: Peter Nelson’s “Left for Dead,” which focuses on Scott, who wrote the preface, and the Stanton book. Efforts to reach Stanton for comment were unsuccessful.
“There is no shortage of people trying to make a movie about the Indianapolis,” Scott said. “Whatever happens, I hope they do the crew justice.”
The predicament now for the long-obscured story is a surprising one: Can multiple films about the tragedy each succeed?
There is, to a degree, precedent. In 1997 two volcano movies fared OK: “Dante’s Peak” ($178 million worldwide) and “Volcano” ($123 million). And in 1998 two films involving earth-threatening asteroids were profitable: “Armageddon” ($554 million) and “Deep Impact” ($350 million).
Thirty-two men are still alive from the crew of the USS Indianapolis, including Richard Stephens, 89, who eagerly awaits the Cage film.
“I think it’s going to be a good movie,” said Stephens, who was 18 when he and the others received the command to abandon ship.
He visited the set in Mobile, Ala., earlier this month. “I told (Cage) I didn’t like movies that were fictional, and they should be trying to show more respect, they should be using the facts. He said it’s going to be pretty true to facts.”
Stephens attended the annual survivors reunion in Indianapolis, which was held Thursday through Sunday at the Hyatt Regency.
Many of the other survivors aren’t well enough to attend the reunions. Last year 18 made the trek.
Films can take years to make. The Cage movie, the first expected to hit the big screen, is expected to be released late next year.
Eck has had a stroke and is not up and around much, said his daughter, Bullard. He was able to muster a smile last month, however, when his daughter told him the Cage movie had begun filming.
“I always knew,” Eck whispered.

About Me

My blog concentrates on submarine history and modern strategy. I plan to sprinkle in commentary on anything of interest. My publisher is the U.S. Naval Institute Press. Information about my books is available at USNI.com. I also have an interest in Bucks County, Pa. history and write a weekly column for the Bucks County Courier Times and The Intelligencer. My new book on the subject is "Bucks County Adventures" available through Amazon.com.